REMODELING: What other missed opportunities should remodelers take advantage of?
COLEMAN: Ask about onsite workshops and training, and attend! We have a huge show every other year, and we also recently had Mike Sloggatt from Gary Katz & Company here for a free day-long demonstration. He’s one of the premier craftsmen in the industry, and he put on a series of fantastic millwork demonstrations. We had a tremendous turnout, and asked for RSVPs, but still a lot of remodelers who said they would come didn’t.
Advanced ordering. Remodelers could be more cost-effective if they planned ahead and gave the supplier an opportunity to pool orders and buy on a more direct basis. For example, with items from Baldwin Hardware, if you give me four or five weeks notice, or even less, I can pool your order with others and get a discount, or possibly cut down on freight costs. Or hit a certain level of volume that allows me to buy better.
Again, I don’t think remodelers should hesitate to ask if their supplier could drop off $75 worth of materials. Chances are I’ll probably have a truck going by there anyway. Don’t assume they won’t send out a truck for a small order. REMODELING: Any other advice to help remodelers have more mutually profitable relationships with LBMs?
COLEMAN: I think some of them need to get up on e-mail! It’s amazing how many don’t use it. They need to be able to communicate more effectively back and forth in order to eliminate miscommunication, to reference items, to see pictures, to review statements, etc. And with Blackberries and iPhones, it’s tremendously helpful.
The remodelers that I’ve brought kicking and screaming to e-mail now can’t live without it. It’s that old adage: e-mail is change and there’s resistance to change.
REMODELING: What’s the lumberyard of the future going to be like, and how will remodelers need to respond?
COLEMAN: The lumberyard of the future is probably going to have less lumber and more composite materials. But it will still need to have material on the ground, especially for remodelers. They run into things day in and day out that they don’t expect. That’s one of the interesting things about the business. We need to respond very quickly and give them the materials they need. They often don’t have the luxury that new homebuilders have of knowing exactly what they’ll need.
We’ll probably do more special orders and made-to-order models, with tighter inventories and manufacturers trying to turn their products around faster. With this increasingly expansive number of choices that people have, you can no longer guess what they’ll want. It can be much more cost-effective and efficient to build the order, assuming that you give a reasonable lead time – usually two to four weeks for even the most complex window and door units
What these fast turnarounds mean, though, is once that order is placed and certain buttons are pushed, it goes right into production. You can’t change your mind. So you’ve got to make sure you’ve got it right. Changing your mind can be very expensive. Scary bad sometimes. Some manufacturers have a 50% surcharge just for a cancellation.
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